


Linger

by Huggle



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Clint Barton, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Bruce Banner, Protective Hulk, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 18:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5215721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huggle/pseuds/Huggle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce never thought Clint was over what Loki did.</p>
<p>He didn't think it was still having such horrific impact on him either.  But with everything he tries to do to help failing miserably, and Clint growing worse by the day, he's quickly running out of options.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Linger

Clint wants to wait, but by the third month Bruce knows this is as permanent as anything in his life has ever been. He doesn’t mind living at the Tower, just as Clint probably doesn’t mind sleeping in quarters on the Carrier, but each of those places are individually theirs, more or less.

Bruce wants a place that can be theirs together. So they let Pepper and Rhodey wrangle with Hill and Fury, and the outcome is that three weeks after that they are the new occupants of a small apartment overlooking the wharf. 

Clint is still doubtful, but Bruce wants this – and they both deserve it. It hurts a little that Clint only seems to move in a piece at a time, like he doesn’t think this is going to work. Like he’s afraid to get used to it.

But then he’d been the same when Bruce, egged on by Tony, had taken the plunge and asked Clint out to dinner. That was a no, but Clint made them sandwiches and they sat at the kitchen table until 2am watching the original version of _The Thing_.

And it continued like that, a little. Clint knew they were dating, Bruce knew Clint knew, but Clint apparently felt either of them putting it into words was likely to bring the universe crashing down on them.

It didn’t help when Tony tried to make a big deal of their one month anniversary – Clint took one look at the cake and party hats (he deliberately did not notice the glitzy banner Tony had strung across the common room) and disappeared out of the room with his own little raincloud hovering overhead.

So Bruce knows he can’t rush this; Clint has to learn on his own that if Bruce has his way this will be as close to forever as it’s possible to get. Considering their lives, the duration of forever will be impossible to predict, but he wants to believe Clint will start counting it in terms of years, hopefully, but please not weeks.

Sometimes he sees Clint’s face, unguarded when he thinks no one is looking, and can tell Clint is measuring it in terms of the end of the day.

**

“These are strong sedatives,” he says, as he picks up the night bag Clint dropped while he was putting his suit away. “You take these every night?”

“No,” Clint says. 

Bruce sits down on the bed, holding the pill bottle in his hand, and decides in this also he’ll give Clint time. Even if he has to sit here all night.

Clint turns around, clearly expecting Bruce to be waiting him out. He holds out his hand, and Bruce considers for a moment whether to just give him back the meds or keep them until he has his answer. Because nearly four months have passed since they started going out, and they’ve slept in the same bed maybe twenty nights out of that (and slept together on maybe five out of those).

Clint’s need for a slow, steady pace notwithstanding, Bruce thinks this is something he should have been told about before now.

“ _No_ ,” Clint says, and sullenly drops his hands back to his side. “Are you going to make a thing out of this?”

“I’m not,” Bruce says. “I’d just like to know how often you take them and why.”

“Why do people take sedatives? Sometimes I just need a little help in sleeping. Not always.”

“Why do you need a little help in sleeping?”

“Fuck,” Clint says. “You know what? Keep them. Throw them in the toilet if you want.” He grabs a pillow from the bed and a blanket from the cupboard and storms into the living room.

Bruce tries to get the infirmary on the carrier three times, but apparently some kind of mould experiment got out of control and they’re a little busy. The last time he calls, the head nurse tells him that even if they did have time to help him, they would not be releasing any information from Agent Barton’s file to someone who wasn’t family or in the chain of command.

Bruce waits an hour after that but he knows then that Clint isn’t coming back to bed that night, and turns in himself.

He can’t really sleep though. Knowing Clint is in the apartment but not next to him where he should be makes him a little crazy. He lies awake, trying every relaxation technique he’s ever learned and while they’re great at stopping him from turning green (mostly) they are of no use in helping him fall asleep when he’s just driven Clint out of their room.

So he hears, quite plainly, Clint’s gasp of pain and he’s sitting up already when the next thing he hears drives his heart rate to dangerous levels.

“Please. Please just stop.”

For a moment, it’s even money whether it’s him or Hulk who rushes through to the living room.

It’s him, barely. 

Clint is writhing on the sofa, blanket twisted around him in his struggles. There’s no one else there, no one out to attack him while he’s asleep. And he is, Bruce can see that. Asleep and in the throes of what seems to be a pretty vivid nightmare.

Clint’s body goes taut, every muscle in his neck and arms standing out. His eyes are squeezed shut, and a pitiful moan breaks away from him.

Bruce hesitates. Normally, he’d be over there trying to wake him. Putting his arms around Clint, telling him it’s ok.

But Clint knows how to snap someone’s neck in less than a second. His reflexes are lethal, and he might not realise quickly enough that he’s safe. 

Bruce is pretty sure he’d change before Clint could kill him, but he isn’t so sure that Hulk would realise Clint was not actually an intentional threat.

He settles for standing at the bottom of the sofa, and shaking Clint’s foot.

“Clint, please, wake up. It’s ok, you’re safe. Clint!”

Clint comes to gradually. He props himself up on his elbows and squints at Bruce in the darkness. “Hey. Sorry, did I-did I wake you?”

Bruce nudges his foot, and once Clint has sat up, he sits down next to him. “Couldn’t sleep. That looked like some nightmare. Is this why you take the sedatives?”

Clint slumps forward, covers his face with his hands. He says something, but it’s muffled.

Bruce pries his hands away, gets Clint to face him. “One more time?”

“Yeah. I usually know when I’m going to have a bad night.”

Bruce kind of wants to kick himself, but he kind of wants to kick Clint too. “Why didn’t you tell me? We’re in this together, right? Army of two?”

Clint gets a kind of horrified look on his face. “You did not just quote from an Olly Murs song.”

There doesn’t seem to be anything to say to offset that, so he steers things back to the topic at hand. “Who did you want to stop? Clint?”

For a moment, he forgets Clint’s slow and steady. But he’s just woke his boyfriend from a nightmare where it looked like someone was hurting him and he can’t really wait for Clint to answer him on a schedule.

“It started to hurt the minute he put me under,” Clint said, finally. “Can’t describe it, doc, just that there wasn’t an inch of me that didn’t feel affected. And I don’t know if it would have made it worse or made it easier, but I couldn’t acknowledge it. There wasn’t room for it – everything in me was just given over to him, getting him where he needed to be, making sure everything he needed done was taken care of.

“Sometimes it felt like I needed his permission to breathe – no way there was scope for telling him he was killing me. I don’t exactly think he would have been interested, anyway.”

Bruce put his hand over Clint’s. “This is not something I should have had to coax you into telling me. If I hadn’t seen those pills, you’d have kept this quiet – right?”

“I’m pretty sure the first time I had a nightmare while we were sleeping together, you’d probably have figured it out.”

“Really." Because four months of courting Clint, and this makes him feel like he only met him yesterday. “Is there any residual pain?”

Clint stares at him, and Bruce knows he’s weighing up how honest to be. “Clint,” he says.

“Sometimes. Only when I wake up, so it could be in my head for all I know. If I take the sedatives, I don’t have the dreams. If I don’t have the dreams....”

“Medication is probably not the best way of dealing with it. You could end up with long term addiction problems. We need to find you another coping mechanism.”

He stands up, takes Clint’s hand. “Have you ever had a nightmare when you don’t take the pills?”

Clint lets Bruce tug him onto his feet. “You’re going to want to hit me for this, but tonight’s the first night I haven’t taken them – excluding missions. I don’t sleep much on missions anyway.”

Bruce pushes down his irritation. It’s not really for Clint, anyway. “Did you tell anybody on the medical team about this?”

“I wouldn’t have got cleared for active duty if they thought anything from Loki had lingered. I told them I just struggled to sleep a little. Anyway, I hoped it’d just settle down. Go away.”

“Which it isn’t. Okay,” Bruce says as Clint starts to step back from him. “Look. I want to try something. Will you come to bed and just let me hold you? Maybe if you’re not on your own, you won’t have a nightmare.”

He doesn’t really give Clint a chance to refuse. Just grabs the pillow, leads Clint back into their bedroom and encourages him under the covers. Turns off the light and gets in himself.

But Clint’s lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, looking like someone who never wants to fall asleep again.

This is not exactly going to plan.

Bruce sighs, and reaches over to manhandle Clint towards him.

“What are you doing?” Clint asks, guardedly, and Bruce wants to ask what exactly Clint _thinks_ he’s doing.

Instead he just says, “This would be easier if you weren’t stiff as a board,” and he can feel Clint forcing himself to relax and be a little more pliant.

It helps, and a moment later he has Clint pressed up against his side, head cushioned on his chest. He puts his arm around Clint, and waits.

“Bruce,” Clint says, after a while. “Maybe I should just take the pills.”

**

But Bruce has been where Clint is. In some ways, he still is, and he knows that sedatives might help Clint short term but in the longer run? He knows where Clint will end up if they don’t fix this.

“Tell me again who this woman is,” Clint says, as Bruce grabs his arm and stops him from turning tail.

“She’s an old friend. I don’t know anybody better to help us with this.”

Fifteen minutes later, they’re both in jog pants and tee-shirts, and Moira takes them through some gentle movements to warm them up.

“You’re new to yoga,” she tells Clint, “but you’re pretty limber. You’ll adjust easily to most of the forms, just let me know if you need anything made a little easier.”

Clint watches her and he watches Bruce, and Bruce keeps a cautious eye on him. He can see Clint is humouring him here; clearly he doesn’t think some stretching is going to stop nightmares about Loki abducting him out of a SHIELD facility, brain washing him and using him as a weapon.

Which means it probably won’t stop the pain that follows, whether it is real or remembered.

But Clint goes along with it anyway. Probably because he doesn’t want Bruce to feel bad, and Moira’s cancelled a class so they have the room to themselves.

That night, Clint sits up in bed – panting and clammy – and Bruce reaches past him to the drawer where Clint keeps his meds. He takes out the bottle and presses it into Clint’s hand. There’s a bottle of water on the bedside cabinet and Clint swallows two pills and gulps the water down.

“It’s not your fault,” he breathes as Bruce helps him lie back. “I don’t want you thinking it’s your fault.”

Bruce nods wordlessly, wrapping an arm around Clint’s waist, pressing himself so tight against his back that he can feel the heat off Clint soaking into him. He does think it’s his fault, maybe a little; being next to Clint, holding him, isn’t enough to drive away the nightmares, and the yoga might go a little way toward helping Clint open up to other things Bruce had thought of – meditation, T’ai Chi - but it’s just too _eventually_.

“We’ll think of something,” he promises Clint, and holds him until finally the pills push him under.

By the time Clint awakes the next morning, Bruce has made an appointment with Ludo Krantz. He’s known the old man since before the accident, and just because Ludo couldn’t help him doesn’t mean he won’t be able to help Clint.

Ludo does make Bruce wait outside though. He spends nearly forty minutes pacing, before the office door opens and Ludo calls him in.

Clint’s in a corner, all hunched in on himself, muscles trembling.

Bruce can’t help but shoot Ludo a glare as he drops to his knees next to Clint, pulls him into his arms, makes soothing sounds because he doesn’t really have words right now.

Afterwards, Clint sleeping under the effects of a light sedative in the recovery room, Ludo pours them both whiskey and then sits on the edge of his desk so he can face Bruce.

“When you called, I didn’t know if your brain had finally snapped from having two people in it.”

“That’s not exactly how it is.”

“It’s one body – no matter how much it changes – with one brain. Ergo two people are in it. This...Loki.... Why hasn’t your other half killed him yet?”

Bruce gives him a wry grin, sips some whiskey. “Aren’t you meant to be encouraging a healthy way to deal with things? You really think I should just let the other guy out for a spot of vengeance?”

Ludo drains his glass, grabs the decanter from the desk and fills it again. Bruce declines.

“You know,” Ludo says, “I heard once that the CIA used to put memory blocks in people that would kill them if anybody tried to breach them. Deep cover agents, sleepers, things like that. So they couldn’t be traced back.”

“I read that Elvis secretly owns four casinos on the strip,” Bruce countered. “And NASA found dinosaur fossils on the moon. Loki didn’t leave anything behind.”

Ludo comes to sit down beside Bruce. “You know how this therapy works. It’s uncomfortable, like lancing a wound. But each time it gets a little easier. I have to be honest, I don’t see it getting easier for your man. And I won’t continue if it’s doing more harm than good.”

Bruce puts his glass down on the desk. “He’s struggling. And I don’t know how else to help him. I don’t want him relying on pills for the rest of his life just so he can get a night’s sleep.”

Ludo patted his arm. “Positive conditioning. Try to break the cycle. Does he feel safe around you? Your particular physical condition not withstanding?”

Clint isn’t one for being talky about things like that. It’s just not him. He shows how he feels rather than says it. But Bruce knows Clint trusts him in both his forms.

“Yes.”

Ludo claps his hands, as though that’s settled. “Then that’s what you do. Each time this bastard Loki makes him feel threatened and unsafe, you must make him feel the opposite.”

Just like that. Bruce reaches for the decanter and almost forgets when to stop pouring. He takes a deep swig from the glass.

“Don’t suppose, one doctor to another, you’ve got any idea how exactly I can do that?”

Ludo smiles from behind his own glass. “Go to where this dybbuk is and kill him.”

**

Clint’s away for the next two days with SHIELD. Bruce thought about calling Natasha, seeing if she could find some way to get Clint out of whatever mission or issue he was being dispatched to deal with.

Except it would be a gross betrayal of Clint’s trust, and Bruce was sure that if he knew, Natasha already did. And since she hadn’t done anything about missions and the like, she either believed Clint could cope, had been pressured by him into doing nothing, or was being even more protective of him in the field than she was usually.

Or maybe she was handling this like she was trying to treat someone injured but refusing medical assistance. Just waiting for Clint to go down already so she could do what she had to do.

At least it gives Bruce a chance to work out what to do, in-between worrying near non-stop that Clint would be so tired he’d miss something, or have some kind of freak out in the middle of a gun battle.

The internet had lots of hits on his searches. People suffering from PTSD. Kidnap victims. Cult escapees – which was off the mark and frighteningly on it at the same time, as far as Bruce was concerned.

He finds one page that told about how victims of child abuse were protected by a group of bikers who’d made it their mission to stay outside the family home to help prove to the victims that their abuser was not going to return.

Clint would be furious at the suggestion that he needed protection, but he also has the acquaintance of some of the most powerful individuals on the planet. If Loki ever comes back, if he ever tries to get a hold of Clint again, he would have to go through them first.

But Clint knows this, already. Clint’s nightmares aren’t about Loki coming back for him, and what he might do then.

They’re about what Loki’s already done, the pain he caused and the way it lingers after each and every nightmare.

Bruce can’t protect Clint from his memories. Neither can Hulk.  


It’s not the first time he’s felt powerless despite being able to take cities apart with his bare hands, but it’s the first time it’s cut into him quite so deep.

**

In the end, Bruce decides he has one option left. It’s risky, and he feels like a shit for doing it, but he’d rather Clint was angry with him than left addicted to sedatives or left with serious mental health issues.

He goes to see Thor.

He’s lucky to catch him just before he’s leaving the Tower to return to Asgard for a while, and Thor doesn’t seem to mind the delay.

When you’re Crown Prince of an entire realm, he figures you can set your own schedule.

It isn’t something he wants to discuss where any of the others can walk in on them, so they settle for a bench in Central Park. Public enough to be private, especially when Thor’s wearing Earth clothing so the only thing that makes him stand out is his freakish build.

Hulk isn’t very happy about it, but Bruce manages to shush him, promising him this is something they’re doing for Clint.

He wonders if it’s because Bruce is going to Thor to help Clint rather than letting them protect him.

“Such cases…where people have suffered abuse as was done to him by my brother…are fortunately rare. Not unheard of, though I wish I could tell you differently. Few have Loki’s particular…talent.”

Bruce clenches his fists against his jeans, fights down what will be an unhelpful response. “How do you treat those people? Help them?”

Thor gives him a look, and Bruce forces himself to meet it.

“He is struggling, then. I had wondered. There are ways, Banner.”

“The way you say that, it’s like I’m not going to be happy hearing them.”

“He would need to come to Asgard.”

Bruce feels Hulk rumble inside him, itching to get out to have his say on that particular idea.

“I think the last thing he needs is being on the same planet as the person who hurt him,” he manages. “Why would he have to leave?”

Thor explains it, and he knows this is still science, albeit clouded in alien mysticism, but it sounds like the equivalent of some skeevy witch woman stripping Clint naked and shaking chicken bones at him.

“The cure sounds worse than the disease,” he says, when Thor’s done.

Thor doesn’t seem to take offense, but he does stand up and for a moment Bruce thinks he’s about to summon Bifrost right there in Central Park.

“Then you will have to find another way,” he says, “or contact me when he can’t take any more.”

**  
That turns out to be less than a week later.

Bruce wakes up to a cold bed and a cold apartment because the bed is empty and their front door is open.

He pulls on some clothes and runs outside into the street in time to see Clint fleeing barefoot down to the slips.

Bruce isn’t as young as Clint, though there’s only a few years in it, but he definitely isn’t as fit. He isn’t going to catch him up before….

Before what, he demands of himself as he runs panting after him. What the hell do you think he’s going to do when he gets to the water?

He can’t answer the question, because he knows.

That fear is enough to push him over, and Hulk is a hell of a lot faster than he is. 

Also stronger, heavier and unfortunately a little clumsier.

His huge pounding footsteps jar the dock where Clint’s standing, and as exhausted and out of it as Clint might be, he can’t catch his balance.

He tips, dangling over the edge, and starts to fall.

Hulk roars and snatches at him, hauling him back just in time. He drops to sit on the dock, and clenches Clint against his chest, huge hand against his back.

“Hulk,” Clint gasps. “Please, I can’t breathe, you’re holding me too tight.”

Dammit, Bruce thinks, and kicks at Hulk to get his attention. You’re crushing him, big guy, loosen up. He’s ok.

“Sorry,” Hulk mutters, guiltily. He eases up, and Clint immediately struggles to extricate himself completely.

“Stop doing that,” Hulk tells him. He’s only let go enough so Clint can breathe, not enough so he can pry himself loose and take another header into the water.

“Stop doing what?” Clint demands. “What the hell made you think you had to come thumping down here? I wasn’t going to drown myself if that’s what you think!”

Bruce is no fool. He can see it in Clint’s eyes, so desperate to be believed even as he struggles to get down. If Clint wasn’t going to kill himself by diving in the drink, then why is he so hell bent on getting out of Hulk’s grasp?

“That’s what I think,” Hulk rumbled. “Why do you want to do that?”

Clint surrenders, suddenly, without warning. He just goes small and still, and Bruce aches to see him like that. Hulk does too; he goes quiet, and strokes one huge finger down Clint’s back.

“Hawkeye,” he says. “Clint.”

“I just want him out of me. And I can’t make him go away.”

Bruce is stunned when he feels Hulk turn his attention inward, to where he’s watching this without directly being able to do anything. 

Thor, Hulk says, and Bruce can hear the annoyance in his voice.

Thor, Bruce agrees, and hopes that they’re both strong enough to get Clint through this.

**

It takes less persuasion than Bruce thought. It probably helps that Natasha is there, giving a wordless recommendation when she takes Clint’s hand, and squeezes.

Once they’re alone, Bruce sits next to him and waits him out. There’s still that doubt in him, that Clint is letting him make this decision. That Clint is doing it because he thinks Bruce needs him to.

Bruce does, but he needs Clint to be ok, not feeling like someone else has slipped into Loki’s shoes.

“You’ll be there, right?” Clint says, finally.

Bruce twists around until he can look at him. He rests his arms on Clint shoulders, leans forward until their foreheads are touching. He tangles his fingers in the hair at the nape of Clint’s neck.

“There’s nobody on Earth or Asgard who could stop me,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> For this prompt at Avenger Kink Meme:
> 
>  
> 
> _Clint never talked too much about his time when he was under Loki's control. He talked to the shrinks but he never got into details. He always said he can't remember._  
>  But he can remember. He's in a relationship with Bruce now and most of the time they share an apartment and Clint still has nightmares. But one evening he starts to talk during his nightmare and Bruce discovers, that to be mindcontrolled caused also real, physical pain. It hurt like hell because all his nerves were affected as well but the mindcontrol prevented him from expressing those pain... and he never told anyone...


End file.
